The Midterm Exam (14)
I’m going to be late. Seriously. Hurry up.
“You can barely stand and you want me to leave you here? Stop squirming.”
I hoisted the whining Emilia onto my back and sprinted across the Imperial Academy grounds. The guards at the main gate took one look at me and immediately realized it was urgent, waving me through without a word. Honestly, I even considered running straight to the exam hall with her still on my back. But since it looked like I might just barely make it, I decided to drop her off at the mansion first.
“Lie down. It looks like you’ve been hit with some kind of paralytic poison, so don’t push yourself until your body starts moving again.”
“Just go. Quickly. Stop worrying about me…”
I left Emilia behind with that anxious expression on her face and burst out of the house. Two minutes until the exam ended. No time to change clothes.
Selection and Concentration. One second on agility.
By the fourth second, I was leaping forward, racing toward the exam hall. I had to save the last second for something else, so I couldn’t waste it on agility. Less than a minute remained.
BANG!
The moment I flung the door open, every eye in the exam hall snapped toward me. Everyone was already here, of course. Who else would show up with less than a minute to spare?
I forced down the dizziness threatening to topple me and descended the stairs as quickly as I could. Ludwig was staring at me with a faintly displeased expression. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he was the one who hired Jin.
“Did you lose your answer sheet?”
“My answer sheet? I didn’t bring one. I’ll be submitting my answers now.”
“Ten seconds left until the deadline.”
“That’s plenty.”
“Just how exactly do you plan to submit—”
Ten seconds. It was tight. Selection and Concentration. One second on mana.
The exam paper I was supposed to write on had burned away, but that was fine. As long as mana existed in a space, it could become an answer sheet. For example, this entire exam hall. It was wide and overflowing with mana—perfect for inscribing answers.
Every formula I had solved was still perfectly clear in my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing solely on the flow of mana as I unfolded the spells in every direction at once. From question one to nine. All at once.
What the hell is this?
The shapes that appeared were strange. They were nothing but simple geometric lines and figures at first, but as they merged and overlapped, they began forming a single image. A lush green meadow…
I never imagined that connecting all the answers for the first-semester Elemental Magic midterm would create a landscape painting like this. Even I, the author, had no idea such a thing was hidden in the exam. Of course, I had never described it.
Wait a second. I did.
I had mentioned it in passing. The narration that Ludwig graded all the submitted answer sheets and then turned away with a hollow smile. At the time, I had thrown it in without much thought, just planning to recover the plot thread later. It never got recovered before the series was discontinued, but here in this world, that loose end was being tied up in a way I had never anticipated.
Only now did it make sense why some of the questions had felt so forced. In magical studies, where concise and efficient circuits were considered beautiful, why would the answers require such unnecessarily complex and inefficient spells? It was all just to complete the picture.
Damn it. Question ten…
One corner of the landscape was pitch black. It was the space reserved for the answer to the tenth question—the one I had never managed to solve. Well, it was probably just more green field, so I wasn’t particularly curious or disappointed.
If Erika got a perfect score, who would end up taking first place?
No, that’s insane.
I should have been disappointed. If Erika scored perfectly on this exam, the point distribution meant she could just barely snatch first place from me. But there was no way I could solve question ten now…
Huh?
At that moment, on top of Ludwig’s desk, one of the many stacked exam papers began to change. Two sheets contained answers for question ten. The security spell on one of them suddenly fell apart.
Startled, I pulled my senses back and whipped my head around.
That girl…
Iris was smiling with her eyes and waving at me. The two people who had solved question ten were obviously Erika and Iris. And the only person who could have predicted this situation and deliberately loosened the security so I could steal the answer was Iris. Erika didn’t have that kind of perceptiveness or wit. She was probably still standing there with her mouth hanging open, blankly admiring the landscape painting formed by the mana flow.
I’ll gratefully copy it, then.
It stung my pride a little to accept Iris’s favor, but I had no choice right now. I wasn’t in any position to be picky. Before the overcharged mana completely dissipated, I hurriedly copied the answer for question ten and engraved it into the empty space.
Just try being wrong after all this.
“Ah.”
A short gasp escaped Ludwig. I wasn’t surprised either. The figure that filled the empty space was a boy wearing a straw hat and smiling brightly. It was Ludwig himself.
Only then did I realize. This was the landscape of Ludwig’s childhood hometown. A place that had since been reduced to a wasteland of death by war. Ironically, the one who had turned his hometown into ruins was Ludwig himself. He had personally led the artillery mage corps and commanded the flames that swallowed his own home.
He had sealed his hometown away inside his own memories with his own two hands.
Ludwig must have been certain that none of the students would ever discover this painting. In the original story, no one ever did. The reason he went through all the trouble of crafting the questions, knowing it would never be found, was probably because deep down he wanted one of the students to complete the picture.
He wanted it to be finished, yet he didn’t want to show anyone else the past of his hometown that he had sealed in his memory. Two contradictory desires. It was the same psychology as a criminal who commits the perfect crime but deliberately leaves behind clues. Knowing they mustn’t be caught, yet secretly hoping someone will find them.
“Time’s up. Go sit down.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Ludwig was visibly shaken, which was rare for him. I turned my back on him, squeezed between Erika and Iris, and took my seat. Erika immediately shot me a look of utter disbelief.
What? What’s your problem?
“Good work. With that, we will conclude the first-semester midterm exams. You may all leave.”
With that abrupt ending, Ludwig disappeared. It was over. Truly over. The forty-eight hours of midterms that had felt like a week had finally come to an end.
The students soon began cheering as they savored their freedom. They poured out of the lecture hall in a rush. Yet even as they left, Erika and Iris, seated on either side of me, didn’t say a word. The atmosphere felt off, so when I tried to stand up, Iris firmly pressed her foot down on top of mine.
Just say it with words. For someone called a saintess, she sure has terrible manners… It was almost ridiculous.
“What is it? What exactly happened?”
Once the three of us were the only ones left in the lecture hall, Erika tilted her head toward me with an overbearing look. She really was disgustingly pretty. Her beauty was the kind that made it uncomfortable to have her face this close.
“I don’t think I have any obligation to explain myself.”
“I was worried when you showed up covered in blood!”
“Worried? Don’t make me laugh. You’d be rejoicing if I died.”
“Ugh…”
I scoffed as I watched Erika shut her mouth, unable to deny it. During my secret meeting with Lady Lichtenburg last time, I knew full well that Erika had been watching from afar. Since this was the same thick-headed Erika from the original story who was prone to every possible misunderstanding, she had probably spun another absurd delusion about it. Of course, in a direction that made her hate me—hate Schluss—even more.
She was that kind of person, after all. In the original story, she liked Hurtlocker but was too stupid to realize her own feelings until the very end. It probably wasn’t much different here. Though without Hurtlocker around, she probably wouldn’t fall for anyone.
“Still… I waited for you today.”
“Oh? To escort me again?”
“N-no! Just! I was passing by! I happened to be walking past the director’s quarters and thought our paths might overlap! I only waited for like a minute? No, thirty seconds? Just long enough to tie my shoelaces!”
“……”
Erika was fanning her face vigorously as if she were overheating, babbling nonstop nonsense. If she said a minute, it probably meant she had waited about an hour. I felt a little sorry that she had almost ruined her own exam because of me.
Just kidding. I wasn’t sorry at all.
“Hmm… Erika. I had no idea you were escorting Schluss throughout the entire midterm period.”
“I told you I wasn’t!”
“Hehe. You worked hard.”
“No, I didn’t… In the end, I couldn’t protect him…”
Erika’s voice grew small and dejected as she looked over my bloodstained clothes. She seemed to have already forgotten that she had just denied being his escort.
“That’s not true. It was thanks to Erika being there that Schluss was able to submit his answers at the very last second. If you hadn’t been guarding him, he wouldn’t even be here right now.”
“R-really?”
As expected of someone with such gullible ears, Erika’s face immediately brightened at Iris’s words. She wasn’t wrong. Given how razor-thin the timing had been, if he had been attacked even once during the midterm period, the chances that he wouldn’t have made it in time were very high.
“H-hmph! So! Schluss Heinkel? Don’t you have something to say to me?”
“Sigh. Thank you.”
“S-sigh? Is that the attitude you use when saying thank—”
“But didn’t you say you weren’t escorting me?”
“Ah. Y-yes. I wasn’t escorting you, right?”
“Then what exactly am I supposed to be thanking you for?”
“Huh? Uh? Yeah… Wait a second. That was escorting… No. It wasn’t. Wait, what?”
Erika’s brain had officially short-circuited. When I turned to look at the culprit, she was wearing an innocent—no, an innocent-looking—smile. As expected of her childhood friend, she seemed to know exactly how to break Erika.
“Schluss.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you have something to say to me?”
“……”
Iris straightened her back, pushed out her chest, and placed one hand over her heart as she spoke. She was really laying it on thick… But I had absolutely no intention of thanking her for what happened today. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t shown me the answer—I had stolen it. And this wasn’t because I was still upset about what happened before.
Scrape…
I silently pushed my chair back and stood up.
“I should get going. My attendant is waiting.”
“How sweet.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. Go on. If you can walk, that is.”
Iris kept saying strange things. I ignored her and tried to take a step forward—
“Ah.”
I lost my balance and pitched forward. My entire body refused to listen… Damn it. It was mana exhaustion. This scene felt strangely familiar somehow…
Thump.
“Hngh.”
A soft sensation pressed against my face. Gentle warmth enveloped me. Along with a sweet scent of flesh.
“I knew it would come to this.”
My voice came out muffled because my mouth was buried in skin. Every time I moved my lips, Iris seemed to shiver. Was it just my imagination? Why was she acting like this?
“I wonder.”
“I-Iris! What the hell are you doing right now!”
“Haa…”
I couldn’t help but sigh at the loud voice coming from behind me. The whole situation was just too exhausting. I felt like I could fall asleep right then and there.